*** The official macOS Sequoia thread ***

I was just looking through System Settings and found something I wasn't sure of. If you go to General > Device Management I have Oracle Virtualbox VM in a provisioning state and I have no idea why. As far as I can remember I haven't Virtualbox but am most likely wrong. Can I just delete this?
 
I'm still on 15.1.1 :p I don't want 'ai bloat' on my MacMini :p
It's dumb as bricks on my M3 Macbook!
 
I was just looking through System Settings and found something I wasn't sure of. If you go to General > Device Management I have Oracle Virtualbox VM in a provisioning state and I have no idea why. As far as I can remember I haven't Virtualbox but am most likely wrong. Can I just delete this?

I just checked my MacBook, nothing or the sort listed on mine.
 
I'm still on 15.1.1 :p I don't want 'ai bloat' on my MacMini :p
Just boot macOS off an external drive, Apple Intelligence is not available when starting your Mac from an external volume.

YRMstdF.jpeg
 
Woah, now that's the most interesting tip I've seen in a while! I'll look into it, thanks!
 
Couple of good fixes for me. Messages no longer randomly and silently crashes and it fixes the two tabs in Safari next to the pinned tabs which weren't showing properly.
 
OK. Having a bit of an issue. I'm trying to reset a microSD card to default so I can use it for a Raspberry Pi 5. I insert it into my Mac Studio and open up Disk Utility where I select erase and set the file system and when I click erase it just sits there doing nothing and I'm not sure what I am doing wrong. I've tried all file systems that are given as an option. It doesn't crash but it also doesn't progress.

Any hints would be greatly appreciated.
 
Try Raspberry Pi Imager which has options to erase SD Cards as well as various install options. As to why Disk Utility isn't working, I've found it be awkward when using file systems other than Mac based ones
 
Try Raspberry Pi Imager which has options to erase SD Cards as well as various install options. As to why Disk Utility isn't working, I've found it be awkward when using file systems other than Mac based ones
Thank you. As for Raspberry Pi Imager it says the SD card only has a very small storage amount which I think is because the whole card has got messed up. The card is actually a 256GB card so I think the partitions are borked.
 
Do you have a Windows machine kicking about? You can use DiskPart to clear the drive.

You can do it in Terminal too, something like:

diskutil list
diskutil eraseDisk free none /dev/makeSureYouSelectTheRightIdentifier!

...and if you want to zero it out:

diskutil secureErase 0 /dev/makeSureYouSelectTheRightIdentifier!

EDITed to add, if you want to add the screenshot of 'diskutil list' we can talk you through it if it would help?
 
Last edited:
Do you have a Windows machine kicking about? You can use DiskPart to clear the drive.

You can do it in Terminal too, something like:

diskutil list
diskutil eraseDisk free none /dev/makeSureYouSelectTheRightIdentifier!

...and if you want to zero it out:

diskutil secureErase 0 /dev/makeSureYouSelectTheRightIdentifier!

EDITed to add, if you want to add the screenshot of 'diskutil list' we can talk you through it if it would help?
I can see the partition on the diskutil list command but I can't delete it. I've tried both eraseDisk and secureErase. The partition is shown as 32MB so I need to delete the entire partition map and start again.

Thank you by the way. That is useful to know for the future!
 
You can try force unmounting first:

diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/driveID
sudo diskutil eraseDisk free none /dev/driveID
You can also nuke the partition - be very careful with this aha.

sudo gpt destroy /dev/driveID
 
Any hints would be greatly appreciated.
You can wipe the drive within terminal/CLI; first, find the disk(/drive) -
Code:
diskutil list

Then unmount and wipe disk (replace 'disk2' with your disk from above) -
Code:
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1m count=1

Then either initialise/format within the Disk Utility app or you can use the diskutil command again.
 
Last edited:
Thank you all for the help. I really appreciate it.

In the end I tried a different SD card and it worked perfectly so it seems I've bricked my old one. Oh, well.
 
Back
Top Bottom